


Dissonance

by kinestheticpariah



Category: Black Hole High | Strange Days at Blake Holsey High
Genre: Age Difference
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:47:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinestheticpariah/pseuds/kinestheticpariah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is it still wrong if she's graduating?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When he walks into the science room, she's there, on the phone.

Her voice is cracking as she speaks, and she's sniffling. He stands in the doorway and waits for her to finish.

"I really, really..." she takes a quick breath, then continues, "need to talk to you." A sniffle. "It's about, um...my dad?" It sounds like a question. There's a pause. "Just call me back. Please."

She hangs up the phone and sniffles.

He steps forward.

"Josie."

She turns to face him, walks to him wordlessly, wraps her arms around him and buries her face into his chest. His tie, to be specific.

He blinks.

Josie Trent has been gone for a year, an entire year. Her identity and existence erased, from time and space, from history. 

And now she's here, at Blake Holsey High. In his office. In the right timeline. Sobbing into his tie.

He hesitantly raises a hand to pat at her head. "It's okay," he whispers, "it's okay."

In the last four years, Josie Trent hasn't cried. At least, not visibly.

She was always the strong one, the sassy one, full of snark and rebellion and impulse. The one who insisted on going back into the wormhole to save Vaughn, and gone back in just as soon as she had returned.

He's snapped out of his thoughts by Josie pulling away from him. She keeps one arm wrapped around his shoulder, and wipes her face with the other. She looks up at him, and takes a breath,

and suddenly she's pulling at the lapels of his jacket, pressing her lips to his, fierce and insistent and as fiery as her hair, as fearless as she was the day she arrived.

And Noel Zachary understands nothing.

Zilch.

Zero percent of anything.

 

This is wrong,

so wrong,

terrible.

His brain is going haywire in disagreement with itself.

She's his student, for chrissakes.

But it does feel nice.

And he doesn't remember the last time he was kissed, maybe that girl who reluctantly spent seven minutes in a closet with him at a party in graduate school.

But she's young, so young,

and he's old,

and this is wrong,

wrong wrong wrong.

But he wraps his arms around her anyways,

kisses back regardless.


	2. Chapter 2

They don't really talk about it afterwards.

He makes coffee over a bunsen burner and sits next to her at a lab table.

She's scared, and he can hear it in her voice, and then she says the last thing he'd ever expect to hear from her,

"I don't think I can do this."

It's hesitant, and he thinks maybe _she_ didn't even expect those words to come out of her mouth.

"I understand how you feel," he offers.

There's a chuckle in her voice when she replies, "You couldn't possibly understand how this feels," and it sounds like she might cry again.

He debates it in his head, briefly, before saying, "I never told you about my father."

Her face stays mostly the same, but he can see a bit of pain in her eyes, like she knows that what he's about to say is going to be completely heartbreaking.

"Like you," he says, "I never knew him. And, also like you, growing up I was raised by my mother."

He finds himself telling her about meeting his father, how when he was her age he asked his mother where he could find his father, and then found him. He smiles a bit when he tells her that he saw the physical resemblance, but his face falls just a little when he tells her that, in reality, his father wasn't what he had expected. He tells her about his mother telling him,

"We have no control over who our parents are,"

and telling him that even though people may be reflections of their parents, individuals have their choices, and the only thing that shapes one's destiny is their own actions.

She struggles to speak, opens her mouth a few times and closing it back up before finally saying,

"I'm really scared."

He nods, says, "I think that's normal," and then tells her, "if we didn't have fear, we wouldn't need courage."

And her face brightens, just a bit.

"And if there is one thing I know, Josie, you are the most courageous person I have ever met in my entire life," he says, and he means it, and she knows he means it.

She smiles, and he smiles back. It's quiet for a moment.

Josie leans forward, kisses him, her arms around his neck.

When she pulls away and begins to apologize, he pulls her closer, presses his lips to hers.

 

As he kisses her there's a dissonance.

An imbalance between his emotions and his knowledge.

She's still seventeen, this is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,

so wrong,

so terrible,

but then again she's not his student anymore,

Blake Holsey is closing,

and he doesn't have much to lose.


End file.
